The place was the ballroom of the Wavecrest Resort in Montauk, N.Y. A group of five well-dressed teenagers from New York City took the stage.

The family of one of the teens had connections and had pulled some strings to get them there. This was the first time the teens were going to perform before an audience beyond city street corners and subways.

And it was the first time that particular audience had ever seen an interracial singing group, one consisting of three blacks, a Puerto Rican and an Italian-American.

One of the black members, Patricia Van Dross, was a sister of future romantic soul singer Luther Van Dross.

"My Juaah-nitaaaah," the group's lead, 18-year-old Johnny Mastrangelo, began in his caressing tenor voice. One by one, the others echoed, "Juanitaaah," in four-part harmony.

After a split-second pause, the group's founder and bass/baritone, 16-year-old J.T. Carter, launched into the song's swing-based rhythm with a "bum-menum-menum-menum..."

The rest of the group chimed in, "Wah-wah, shoop-shoop, she-doobie-doobie..."

People in the audience began nodding their heads and tapping their feet to the a capella singing.

And that's how the public got its first taste of the The Crests, who became one of the doo-wop era's most successful groups.

Fifty-five years later, a white-haired Carter, now living in Bushkill, sat and reminisced, surrounded by drum sets and guitars hanging on the wall at Moe'st Everything Muse in Stroudsburg, where he gives voice lessons.

"'My Juanita' was one of the first two songs we ever recorded," he said, his voice still capable of hitting high as well as low notes. "That was in '57, when we started out at Joyce Records. The other song was 'Sweetest One,' but almost no one knows either of those songs."

The Crests had several Top 40 hits between 1958, when Van Dross left the group, and 1960, including "Step By Step," "The Angels Listened In" and "Trouble In Paradise." Perhaps their most successful is 1958's "16 Candles," covered by The Stray Cats on the soundtrack to the 1984 movie of the same title.

"I've had a voice and an ear for harmony probably ever since the womb," said Carter, 71.

Born the second of three children to farmers in Plains, Ga., Carter said his family is related to that of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who's from the same town.

At age 3, J.T. Carter moved with his family to Jersey City, N.J., where his younger brother was born and his father became a building janitor and recycled junk for cash.

"Coming from a Georgia shack, it was the first time we'd ever lived in a building with stairs," Carter chuckled. "At first, we were so nervous being up so high off the ground that we would get on our knees whenever we went to the window to look out across the river at the New York City skyline."

When he was 7, Carter's family piled their furniture and other belongings into his father's pickup truck and moved across the river, to New York City's East Side. There, they befriended many Jewish immigrants who had survived Nazi-occupied Europe "with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their faith."

"I remember being in a synagogue with one of my Jewish friends one day and hearing the cantor sing," Carter said. "I imagined myself singing along in harmony to each note he hit. That experience made my desire to sing even more solid."

During junior high and high school, Carter met Van Dross, Mastrangelo, Talmoudge Gough and Harold Torres. All came from different neighborhoods, but shared a love of singing in harmony.

"Growing up in the city, we listened to groups like The Ink Spots, The Andrews Sisters and The Mills Brothers," Carter said. "Then came groups like Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, who brought that harmonizing sound into a new era."

Carter and his four friends hung out and sang together, sometimes at local church benefits, doing their own versions of professional artists' songs. He said he came up with the idea for them to start recording professionally as a group and vocally trained them to the point where they could do so.

"We started thinking up names for ourselves," he said. "The others came up with some funny ideas, like 'The Windows' or even 'The Doorknobs.' After we performed at the Wavecrest, I wanted to go with 'The Crests.' That stuck."

The group was introduced to band leader Al Brown, who brought them to Joyce Records to record their first two original songs written by the members themselves. Their next eight songs were on the Coed Records label.

Further exposure came from performing on stage with more established groups like The Flamingoes and Willie Winfield and The Harptones, as well as in disc jockey Alan Freed's 1958 Christmas-New Year's rock concert on Broadway.

"Over the next couple of years, we learned how dirty the record business could be," Carter said. "We and many other artists at that time were taken advantage of and cheated out of the profits of our work. The record companies even went after the leftover pennies we got."

There were good experiences, though, like the group seeing its music help define a generation and bring people together.

"We toured in the North and South and saw racial barriers start to come down among the kids who listened to music like ours," Carter said. "I mean, if some of us of different races could learn to sing in harmony, then why couldn't we all learn to live in harmony?"

The Crests also performed in famous company, such as actress Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedy family.

Mastrangelo left the group in 1961, shortened his stage name and later formed Johnny Maestro and The Brooklyn Bridge, who sang "The Worst That Could Happen."

Carter then secured a seven-year contract as a solo artist with Decca Records and got to record one song, "Closer To Your Heart," with that label. But, Decca Records ran into legal troubles, preventing Carter and other artists on the label from recording any further songs, and "Closer To Your Heart" was shelved without ever getting radio air time.

The catch was that Carter couldn't perform as a solo artist with any other record company because his seven-year contract with Decca Records was still in place, despite the company's troubles.

This didn't stop Carter from working, as he went on to produce, record and perform with artists like The Five Satins, Charlie Thomas' Drifters, Maestro's Brooklyn Bridge, Harold Melvin and The Bluenotes and Teddy Pendergrass. Meanwhile, he worked to keep The Crests alive with a series of new members while studying for a time at the Metropolitan Opera and teaching voice lessons.

After The Crests broke up in 1978, Carter reformed the group in 1980, with Bill Damon, Greg Sereck, Dennis Ray and Jon Ihle. He continued the group into the 1990s, finally selling The Crests' name trademarks.

Carter and Gough are now the original Crests' two surviving members.

The Crests were inducted into the United in Group Harmony Association Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2004.

Maestro, who died in 2010, was honored posthumously May 9 by the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, whose district includes the neighborhood where Maestro was born and raised, was present at that recognition ceremony.

Today, Carter is anything but tired of music.

"I want to keep the music of that era alive," Carter said. "I'm working on a TV talk show where those artists from long ago come together to perform and talk about how it was before rock 'n' roll.

"I've been in touch with Chubby Checker, Charlie Thomas from The Drifters, Dolores 'Dee-Dee' Kenniebrew from The Crystals and some other folks," he said. "Comcast and Disney have expressed interest in airing a pilot, but we have to see what happens."

Carter hopes to have the show feature younger performers doing renditions of the original artists' songs and then "battling" with the original artists.

"This music is a part of history," he said. "We should treat it that way."